Dad

The bureau of meteorology in Australia ALWAYS has significanly different weather forcasts to ALL weather plug ins I have tried for my PDA (and the firefox weathe plugin for that matter)

Whats with that?!?! :realmad:

I should probably add that the BOM is usually pretty accurate also...

MrKlaatu

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It's undoubtedly the Coriolis Effect.

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Dad

Coriolis effect?



Oh, you mean the water swirlin' down the crapper the wrong way...

G M Fude

What city? I've found Melbourne and Sydney forecasts to be pretty accurate with both weather.com and BoM. And they're okay with what the weather there eventually turns out like.

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Steve Smith

Dad

Perth - what I mean to say is that the today plugins I have tried are always wrong - Oz BOM is pretty good

Frenchy

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Forecast - 100% humidity

G M Fude

Yep, I knew what you meant about the applets versus BoM. Okay, I've never checked the Perth one since I seldom go there. Bummer though; I find Spb Weather really handy, being a bit of an obsessive weather nerd.

Also, OT: Snopes on coriolis.

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Steve Smith

Dad

Originally Posted by G M Fude

Also, OT: Snopes on coriolis.

Well bugger me! I would have been willing to put a sizeable ammount of money on the fact that water naturally flows in opposite directions down drains in the different hemispheres!

Frenchy

Originally Posted by Dad

Coriolis effect?

Does it means that at the Equator the water just go down straight?

G M Fude

I live in Oz but do a lot of work in South East Asia and China. I've casually observed the phenomenon on numerous visits and Snopes is right. Only affects really large scale fluids and weather systems e.g. in the southern hemisphere the air (and resultant winds) in a high pressure region rotates anti-clockwise, but in the northern hemisphere it's clockwise.

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Steve Smith

xuperman

Funny you should ask about this as I had the exact same problem and have happily found a solution:
If you use SPB Weather, simply download Recrem's Weather Channel Templates. It obtains forecasts from weatherchannel.com.au which as they proudly display on their main page is "based on data from BOM".
Unfortunately, the templates only allow you to get the forecasts for the coming 4 days, but this should be enough if you sync regularly.
This was the main reason I chose SPB over Pocket Weather, as the latter only allows you to obtain data from weather.com, which is notoriously poor for non-American forecasts.

ppt

one thing i noticed when using recrem's weather channel templates: if you refresh the data in the middle of the day, the max & min temp will become the same & instead of a weather pic you get 'n/a'

Dad

Dude! Thankyou! and a big sloppy kiss if it actually works ;) :p

G M Fude

Originally Posted by Frenchy

Does it means that at the Equator the water just go down straight?

In fact, in a way you're exactly right. On a large scale there is no coriolis force at the equator, and this plagued mariners a century and more ago, in the days of sail. Certain parts of the world were subject to large areas of calm, typically around the equator. The absence of trade winds -- which were influenced in no small way by the rotation of the planetary sphere -- would leave vessels drifting aimlessly, sometimes for weeks at end. They referred to it as the doldrums. Which I think sounds rather better than intertropical convergence zone.

The things you can learn on Aximsite, eh?

Xuperman, thanks for the tip -- I'll definitely check that out, too.

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Steve Smith